After driver beating, discussion of race, racism ‘has to be priority’

Steve Utash, 54, of Roseville, was in critical condition Friday with severe head injuries after a neighborhood mob beat and kicked him when he stopped to check on the boy, 10, who stepped from a curb into the path of his pickup. Submitted photo

The driver, Steve Utash, 54, was in critical condition Friday with severe head injuries after a neighborhood mob beat and kicked him when he stopped to check on the boy, 10, who stepped from a curb into the path of his pickup.

The boy, David Harris, was expected to recover from his injuries, according to the boy’s uncle. The driver wasn’t at fault in the accident, said Detroit police. No arrests have been made.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Shea Howell, Oakland University Department of Communication and Journalism professor and chairperson.

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Howell said the distance between blacks and whites “allows us to be horrific to each other.”

Author Jon Powell, who has written about race and place, said Howell, “makes it clear that the kind of segregation we have in Metro Detroit” — ranked last year as the second-most segregated area in the U.S. by Business Insider — “is unhealthy for everybody.”

There needs to be “some soul-searching on the part of everybody in this region,” Howell said.

Howell said statements like that “create an atmosphere of tension,” she said.

Patterson said the quote was from 35 years ago, and said he wasn’t to blame for the current situation.

Professor Ron Hall at Michigan State University’s School of Social Work, an expert in racism and diversity, lived in Detroit in the 1970s-’80s when the city was undergoing a “period of polarization that still exists today,” he said.

“What has struck me is, we have never been willing to confront the race issue,” he said.

Hall believes an official government commission should be established to deal with race, a group with power.

Blame media

Both Hall and Howell said the media writes about the more sensational incidents while a different kind of violence, citing:

• lack of transportation

• subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent foreclosures

• poverty, lack of opportunities

“Those things don’t get this kind of attention,” Howell said.

Hall said so often black-on-black crime doesn’t make the news.

“There’s an appearance (in media reports) that only people who are assaulted are white,” he said.

The historical injustices experienced by minorities has and continues to create trauma, said Hall.

He referred to the outcome in Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida, a situation that Hall said “festers. If nothing is done about the (driver beating), something there will fester.”

The solution of improving relations will be difficult.

“I’m not very optimistic,” said Hall. People can’t avoid confronting race and racism, he said.

“It has to become a priority.”

Readers online said, “How can anyone label an entire city for what these individuals did?” asked Bryan Raspberry. “I live in Grand Blanc and was told they were all racists, not true. That goes for Detroit. Some are idiots, some not.” He also wondered why no one mentioned a nurse who stopped the beating as an example of good in the city.

Maria Mitchell wrote that she believes Detroiters feel abandoned by their own government and police.

“Too many unsolved cases, long wait for police and EMS, unsolved arsons. This is why Detroiters are shooting home intruders, hunting a mentally ill child molester and beating a man they thought should be punished for a car accident. Mob rule, eh?”